From role to name
The word traces through Greek and Latin back to the Hebrew satan, meaning "adversary" or "one who plots against another," itself from a root meaning to oppose or obstruct. The scholar Elaine Pagels has noted that in the earliest biblical sources, "the satan" describes a function — most often, an angel sent by God to test or obstruct human beings — rather than a proper name for one specific figure. Only over time did later religious tradition consolidate this adversarial role into the single named figure familiar today.